The Consolations of Philosophy Read online

  1818 He finishes The World as Will and Representation, which he knows to be a masterpiece. It explains his lack of friends: ‘A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?’

  1818–19 To celebrate the completion of his book, Schopenhauer travels to Italy. He delights in art, nature and the climate, though his mood remains fragile: ‘We should always be mindful of the fact that no man is ever very far from the state in which he would readily want to seize a sword or poison in order to bring his existence to an end; and those who are far from believing this could easily be convinced of the opposite by an accident, an illness, a violent change of fortune – or of the weather.’ He visits Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice and meets a number of attractive women at receptions: ‘I was very fond of them – if only they would have had me.’ Rejection helps to inspire a view that: ‘Only the male intellect, clouded by the sexual impulse, could call the undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged sex the fair sex.’

  1819 The World as Will and Representation is published. It sells 230 copies. ‘Every life history is a history of suffering’; ‘If only I could get rid of the illusion of regarding the generation of vipers and toads as my equals, it would be a great help to me.’

  1820 Schopenhauer attempts to gain a university post in philosophy in Berlin. He offers lectures on ‘The whole of philosophy, i.e. the theory of the essence of the world and of the human mind.’ Five students attend. In a nearby building, his rival, Hegel, can be heard lecturing to an audience of 300. Schopenhauer assesses Hegel’s philosophy: ‘[I]ts fundamental ideas are the absurdest fancy, a world turned upside down, a philosophical buffoonery … its contents being the hollowest and most senseless display of words ever lapped up by blockheads, and its presentation … being the most repulsive and nonsensical gibberish, recalling the rantings of a bedlamite.’ The beginnings of disenchantment with academia: ‘That one can be serious about philosophy has as a rule not occurred to anyone, least of all to a lecturer on philosophy, just as no one as a rule believes less in Christianity than does the Pope.’

  1821 Schopenhauer falls in love with Caroline Medon, a nineteen-year-old singer. The relationship lasts intermittently for ten years, but Schopenhauer has no wish to formalize the arrangement: ‘To marry means to do everything possible to become an object of disgust to each other.’ He nevertheless has fond thoughts of polygamy: ‘Of the many advantages of polygamy, one is that the husband would not come into such close contact with his in-laws, the fear of which at present prevents innumerable marriages. Ten mothers-in-law instead of one!’

  1822 Travels to Italy for a second time (Milan, Florence, Venice). Before setting out, he asks his friend Friedrich Osann to look out for ‘any mention of me in books, journals, literary periodicals and such like.’ Osann does not find the task time-consuming.

  1825 Having failed as an academic, Schopenhauer attempts to become a translator. But his offers to turn Kant into English and Tristram Shandy into German are rejected by publishers. He confides in a letter a melancholy wish to have ‘a position in bourgeois society’, though will never attain one. ‘If a God has made this world, then I would not like to be the God; its misery and distress would break my heart.’ Fortunately, he can rely on a comfortable sense of his own worth in darker moments: ‘How often must I learn … that in the affairs of everyday life … my spirit and mind are what a telescope is in an opera-house or a cannon at a hare-hunt?’

  1828 Turns forty. ‘After his fortieth year,’ he consoles himself, ‘any man of merit … will hardly be free from a certain touch of misanthropy.’

  1831 Now forty-three, living in Berlin, Schopenhauer thinks once again of getting married. He turns his attentions to Flora Weiss, a beautiful, spirited girl who has just turned seventeen. During a boating party, in an attempt to charm her, he smiles and offers her a bunch of white grapes. Flora later confides in her diary: ‘I didn’t want them. I felt revolted because old Schopenhauer had touched them, and so I let them slide, quite gently, into the water behind me.’ Schopenhauer leaves Berlin in a hurry: ‘Life has no genuine intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by want and illusion.’

  1833 He settles in a modest apartment in Frankfurt am Main, a town of some 50,000 inhabitants. He describes the city, the banking centre of continental Europe, as ‘a small, stiff, internally crude, municipally puffed-up, peasant-proud nation of Abderites, whom I do not like to approach’.

  His closest relationships are now with a succession of poodles, who he feels have a gentleness and humility humans lack: ‘The sight of any animal immediately gives me pleasure and gladdens my heart.’ He lavishes affection on these poodles, addressing them as ‘Sir’, and takes a keen interest in animal welfare: ‘The highly intelligent dog, man’s truest and most faithful friend, is put on a chain by him! Never do I see such a dog without feelings of the deepest sympathy for him and of profound indignation against his master. I think with satisfaction of a case, reported some years ago in The Times, where Lord X kept a large dog on a chain. One day as he was walking through the yard, he took it into his head to go and pat the dog, whereupon the animal tore his arm open from top to bottom, and quite right, too! What he meant by this was: “You are not my master, but my devil who makes a hell of my brief existence!” May this happen to all who chain up dogs.’

  The philosopher adopts a rigid daily routine. He writes for three hours in the morning, plays the flute (Rossini) for an hour, then dresses in white tie for lunch in the Englischer Hof on the Rossmarkt. He has an enormous appetite, and tucks a large white napkin into his collar. He refuses to acknowledge other diners when eating, but occasionally enters into conversation over coffee. One of them describes him as ‘comically disgruntled, but in fact harmless and good-naturedly gruff’.

  (Ill. 19.6)

  Another reports that Schopenhauer frequently boasts of the excellent condition of his teeth as evidence that he is superior to other people, or as he puts it, superior to the ‘common biped’.

  After lunch, Schopenhauer retires to the library of his club, the nearby Casino Society, where he reads The Times – the newspaper which he feels will best inform him of the miseries of the world. In mid-afternoon, he takes a two-hour walk with his dog along the banks of the Main, muttering under his breath. In the evening, he visits the opera or the theatre, where he is often enraged by the noise of late-comers, shufflers and coughers – and writes to the authorities urging strict measures against them. Though he has read and much admires Seneca, he does not agree with the Roman philosopher’s verdict on noise: ‘I have for a long time been of the opinion that the quantity of noise anyone can comfortably endure is in inverse proportion to his mental powers … The man who habitually slams doors instead of shutting them with the hand … is not merely ill-mannered, but also coarse and narrow-minded … We shall be quite civilized only when … it is no longer anyone’s right to cut through the consciousness of every thinking being … by means of whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-cracking … and so on.’

  1840 He acquires a new white poodle and names her Atma, after the world-soul of the Brahmins. He is attracted to Eastern religions in general and Brahmanism in particular (he reads a few pages of the Upanishads every night). He describes Brahmins as, ‘the noblest and oldest of people’, and threatens to sack his cleaning lady, Margaretha Schnepp, when she disregards orders not to dust the Buddha in his study.

  He spends increasing amounts of time alone. His mother worries about him: ‘Two months in your room without seeing a single person, that is not good, my son, and saddens me, a man cannot and should not isolate himself in that manner.’ He takes to sleeping for extended periods during the day: ‘If life and existence were an enjoyable state, then everyone would reluctantly approach the unconscious state of sleep and would gladly rise from it again. But the very opposite is the case, for everyone very willingly goes to sleep and unwillingly gets up again.�
�� He justifies his appetite for sleep by comparing himself to two of his favourite thinkers: ‘Human beings require more sleep the more developed … and the more active their brain is. Montaigne relates of himself that he had always been a heavy sleeper; that he had spent a large part of his life in sleeping; and that at an advanced age he still slept from eight to nine hours at a stretch. It is also reported of Descartes that he slept a great deal.’

  1843 Schopenhauer moves to a new house in Frankfurt, number 17 Schöne Aussicht, near the river Main in the centre of town (English translation: Pretty view). He is to live in the street for the rest of his life, though in 1859, he moves to number 16 after a quarrel with his landlord over his dog.

  1844 He publishes a second edition and a further volume of The World as Will and Representation. He remarks in the preface: ‘Not to my contemporaries or my compatriots, but to mankind I consign my now complete work, confident that it will not be without value to humanity, even if this value should be recognized only tardily, as is the inevitable fate of the good in whatever form.’ The work sells under 300 copies: ‘Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired; but the admirers, even if there is every cause, are not very keen to express their admiration. And so the happiest man is he who has managed sincerely to admire himself, no matter how.’

  1850 Atma dies. He buys a brown poodle called Butz, who becomes his favourite poodle. When a regimental band passes his house, Schopenhauer is known to stand up in the middle of conversations and put a seat by the window from which Butz can look out. The creature is referred to by the children of the neighbourhood as ‘young Schopenhauer’.

  1851 He publishes a selection of essays and aphorisms, Parerga and Paralipomena. Much to the author’s surprise, the book becomes a bestseller.

  1853 His fame spreads across Europe (‘the comedy of fame’, as he puts it). Lectures on his philosophy are offered at the universities of Bonn, Breslau and Jena. He receives fan mail. A woman from Silesia sends him a long, suggestive poem. A man from Bohemia writes to tell him he places a wreath on his portrait every day. ‘After one has spent a long life in insignificance and disregard, they come at the end with drums and trumpets and think that is something’ is the response, but there is also satisfaction: ‘Would anyone with a great mind ever have been able to attain his goal and create a permanent and perennial work, if he had taken as his guiding star the bobbing will-o’-the-wisp of public opinion, that is to say the opinion of small minds?’ Philosophically minded Frankfurters buy poodles in homage.

  1859 As fame brings more attention from women, his views on them soften. From having thought them ‘suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word, big-children, their whole lives long’, he now judges that they are capable of selflessness and insight. An attractive sculptress and an admirer of his philosophy, Elizabeth Ney (a descendant of Napoleon’s Maréchal), comes to Frankfurt in October and stays in his apartment for a month making a bust of him.

  ‘She works all day at my place. When I get back from luncheon we have coffee together, we sit together on the sofa and I feel as if I were married.’

  (Ill. 19.7)

  1860 Increasing ill-health suggests the end is near: ‘I can bear the thought that in a short time worms will eat away my body; but the idea of philosophy professors nibbling at my philosophy makes me shudder.’ At the end of September, after a walk by the banks of the Main, he returns home, complains of breathlessness and dies, still convinced that ‘human existence must be a kind of error.’

  Such was the life of a philosopher who may offer the heart unparalleled assistance.

  2

  A contemporary love story

  WITH SCHOPENHAUERIAN NOTES

  A man is attempting to work on a train between Edinburgh and London. It is early in the afternoon on a warm spring day.

  (Ill. 20.1)

  Papers and a diary are on the table before him, and a book is open on the armrest. But the man has been unable to hold a coherent thought since Newcastle, when a woman entered the carriage and seated herself across the aisle. After looking impassively out of the window for a few moments, she turned her attention to a pile of magazines. She has been reading Vogue since Darlington. She reminds the man of a portrait by Christen Købke of Mrs Høegh-Guldberg (though he cannot recall either of these names), which he saw, and felt strangely moved and saddened by, in a museum in Denmark a few years before.

  (Ill. 20.2)

  But unlike Mrs Høegh-Guldberg, she has short brown hair and wears jeans, a pair of trainers and a canary-yellow V-neck sweater over a T-shirt. He notices an incongruously large digital sports-watch on her pale, freckle-dotted wrist. He imagines running his hand through her chestnut hair, caressing the back of her neck, sliding his hand inside the sleeve of her pullover, watching her fall asleep beside him, her lips slightly agape. He imagines living with her in a house in south London, in a cherry-tree-lined street. He speculates that she may be a cellist or a graphic designer, or a doctor specializing in genetic research. His mind turns over strategies for conversation. He considers asking her for the time, for a pencil, for directions to the bathroom, for reflections on the weather, for a look at one of her magazines. He longs for a train crash, in which their carriage would be thrown into one of the vast barley-fields through which they are passing. In the chaos, he would guide her safely outside, and repair with her to a nearby tent set up by the ambulance service, where they would be offered lukewarm tea and stare into each other’s eyes. Years later, they would attract interest by revealing that they had met in the tragic Edinburgh Express collision. But because the train seems disinclined to derail, and though he knows it to be louche and absurd, the man cannot help clearing his throat and leaning over to ask the angel if she might have a spare ballpoint. It feels like jumping off the side of a very high bridge.

  1. Philosophers have not traditionally been impressed: the tribulations of love have appeared too childish to warrant investigation, the subject better left to poets and hysterics. It is not for philosophers to speculate on hand-holding and scented letters. Schopenhauer was puzzled by the indifference:

  We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man has hitherto been almost entirely disregarded by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.

  The neglect seemed the result of a pompous denial of a side of life which violated man’s rational self-image. Schopenhauer insisted on the awkward reality:

  Love … interrupts at every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds. It does not hesitate … to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned. It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts … It sometimes demands the sacrifice of … health, sometimes of wealth, position and happiness.

  2. Like the Gascon essayist born 255 years before him, Schopenhauer was concerned with what made man – supposedly the most rational of all creatures – less than reasonable. There was a set of Montaigne’s works in the library of the apartment at Schöne Aussicht. Schopenhauer had read how reason could be dethroned by a fart, a big lunch or an ingrowing toenail, and concurred with Montaigne’s view that our minds were subservient to our bodies, despite our arrogant faith in the contrary.

  3. But Schopenhauer went further. Rather than alighting on loose examples of the dethronement of reason, he gave a name to a force within us which he felt invariably had precedence over reason, a force powerful enough to distort all of reason’s plans and judgements, and which he termed the will-to-life (

  Wille zum

  Leben

  ) – defined as an inherent drive within human beings to stay alive and reproduce. The will-to-life led even committed depressives to fight for survival when they were threatened by a shipwreck or grave illness. It ensured that the most c
erebral, career-minded individuals would be seduced by the sight of gurgling infants, or if they remained unmoved, that they were likely to conceive a child anyway, and love it fiercely on arrival. And it was the will-to-life that drove people to lose their reason over comely passengers encountered across the aisles of long-distance trains.

  4. Schopenhauer might have resented the disruption of love (it isn’t easy to proffer grapes to schoolgirls); but he refused to conceive of it as either disproportionate or accidental. It was entirely commensurate with love’s function:

  Why all this noise and fuss? Why all the urgency, uproar, anguish and exertion?… Why should such a trifle play so important a role …? It is no trifle that is here in question; on the contrary, the importance of the matter is perfectly in keeping with the earnestness and ardour of the effort. The ultimate aim of all love-affairs … is actually more important than all other aims in man’s life; and therefore it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.

  And what is the aim? Neither communion nor sexual release, understanding nor entertainment. The romantic dominates life because:

  What is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation … the existence and special constitution of the human race in times to come.

  It is because love directs us with such force towards the second of the will-to-life’s two great commands that Schopenhauer judged it the most inevitable and understandable of our obsessions.